Dell to Return Funds to Shareholders in $24 Billion Deal to Go Private

Dell today announced that it is officially going private in a $24.4 billion deal that will see the company owned by founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners. The deal also involves a $2 billion loan from Microsoft.

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"Michael Dell is a true visionary and one of the preeminent leaders of the global technology industry," said Egon Durban, a Silver Lake Managing Partner. "Silver Lake is looking forward to partnering with him, the talented management team at Dell and the investor group to innovate, invest in long-term growth initiatives and accelerate the company's transformation strategy to become an integrated and diversified global IT solutions provider."

Following completion of the transaction, Mr. Dell, who owns approximately 14 percent of Dell's common shares, will continue to lead the company as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and will maintain a significant equity investment in Dell by contributing his shares of Dell to the new company, as well as making a substantial additional cash investment.

Apple fans have been particularly interested in the fate of Dell since Michael Dell recommended in October 1997 that Apple be shut down.

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"What would I do? I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.

At the time, Dell was surging to become the world's top-selling PC manufacturer, but it has since faltered and now stands as the third-largest manufacturer as HP and Lenovo now battle for the top spot.

Today's move is of course far from a shutdown for Dell, but Apple fans may take a certain pleasure in seeing the company turn private and return funds to shareholders as it continues its efforts to revitalize the Dell brand in a stagnant PC market.

The rumors were true. Dell has announced that it will go private, assisted by a $2 billion loan from Microsoft. The full deal between stockholders, Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake is being valued at around $24.4 billion.

I wonder what the terms of the loan are and what's MS' expectation. Rumors were swirling that Dell was going to push harder into the Linux sector perhaps now they'll focus more attention on windows since MS lent them a boat load of money.

If Apple were to go private today it would be a $550B LBO. Since most shares are not owned by insiders, which is different from Dell, it would be more difficult to go private at all. However it would be possible for Apple and Braeburn to get considerable leverage, both bank and brokerage, buy back its stock in the open market and through dark pools, and make slow progress toward setting up a future go private effort.

If they were to buy back half the company at stock prices of $450-500 at $275B and assuming 4:1 leverage, the cash cost would be only $55B. Pocket change for Apple and Braeburn.

This is going to be another deal where the vulture capital firm hollows out and whores out a company, running up huge bills on its credit and then walking away as everything burns. It's just like a scene from "Goodfellas" except this is all legal. It's the beginning of the end for Dell and in six months there won't be a trace of production, support or anything else in the US.

That's the point, they're not closing down, simply freeing themselves of the analyst whores who do nothing but expect more. Good luck to them.

Agreed. Look at what these "expert" analysts did to Apple's last quarter. Their best EVER quarter by some margin, but because they didn't meet the results these "experts" predicted, they suffered massively negative reporting, and a massive drop in sp/market cap.

It's almost as if these analysts buy shares, over-up the predictions and dump just before announcements.

I remember when Dell use to make quality PCs. The PCs we've gotten out of them lately at work have been so bad we've had to drop them and go with Lenovo. Even the Dell repairmen that come by comment on how shoddy the quality is.

Assembly of desktop computers for the North American market formerly took place at Dell plants in Austin, Texas (original location) and Lebanon, Tennessee (opened in 1999), which have been closed in 2008 and early 2009, respectively. The plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received $280 million USD in incentives from the state and opened in 2005, but ceased operations in November 2010, and Dell's contract with the state requires them to repay the incentives for failing to meet the conditions.[74][75] Most of the work that used to take place in Dell's U.S. plants was transferred to contract manufacturers in Asia and Mexico, or some of Dell's own factories overseas. The Miami, Florida facility of its Alienware subsidiary remains in operation, while Dell servers (its most profitable products) continue to be produced in Austin, Texas.

Used to be (pre ~2008) you could get a semi-custom Dell in a matter of days. When I last priced a Windows laptop and looked at Dell it was 7-10 days at best unless you took their default configuration.